


You Are Fried Chicken

by giddytf2



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, OTP Feels, Pheels, Romance, SHIELD Husbands, So much pheels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:26:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giddytf2/pseuds/giddytf2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From under the blankets, Clint’s right hand sneaks out into the open. It just so happens that Coulson lifts and rests his right forearm on the bed, that Clint’s hand can therefore touch it and linger on it. (It was a coincidence, <i>shut up</i>.)</p><p>“You are fried chicken.”</p><p>Coulson blinks. Frowns even as his lips quirk up a little more. <i>What</i>? </p><p>(Or, a fluffy, no-angst, romantic Clint/Coulson story about fried chicken and caramel on blue eyes and Coulson's dinner roll-ass.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are Fried Chicken

**Author's Note:**

> Someone said to me, "I challenge you to write a Clint/Coulson story that has zero angst and all the fluffy, happy Pheels in the world that'll make me smile like an idiot at the end."
> 
> And I said, "Okay."
> 
> Also, this is my first safe-for-work Clint/Coulson story. * _gasp_ *
> 
> Ambiance: [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button OST - Love Returns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EM1zg-vydg)

One day, so many years from now, Coulson will be asked a very important question by a little girl with hair as dark as his once was and eyes as vibrant blue as Clint’s still are.

“Grandpapa, have you always loved Grandpop?”

Coulson, being this precious, little girl’s grandfather so many, many years from now, will stroke her rotund cheek and smile at her.

He will say, “Yes. Always.”

And her other grandfather, sitting in the cushioned armchair next to the couch, painting transparent nail polish onto the bolts and screw heads of his bow, will simply smile that small, endearing smile Coulson still adores so.

 

<<< >>>

 

Now, though, Coulson’s hair is still very much dark brown and thin and styled to one side with gel. It’s the same brand of gel that Clint uses to spike up his short, blond and utterly luxuriant hair, but Coulson’s yet to tell Clint that. It’ll be a while before he does. (Five and a half months from now, to be specific, when Clint catches him with the gel container in hand in their bathroom.)

Clint is still unconscious after being moved here from the recovery room. Blanketed up to the chest. Flanked by bedside patient monitors that track his vital signs and beep in the background with Clint’s every heartbeat. The entirety of the left side of Clint’s face is a swollen contusion. Clint’s lower lip is split near the left corner. There are bruises on the right side of Clint’s face too, as well as his neck and shoulder. Coulson knows there are numerous more bruises and cuts blemishing Clint’s bandaged torso under the hospital gown and blankets. Fractured ribs. Internal bleeding halted by surgery.

Clint had shoved him out of the way of the silver sedan only to be struck head-on. Jesus, he can still see Clint barreling up the hood and smashing into the windshield, shattering it into a patina of off-white cobwebs. See Clint tumble off the car and onto the street to lie there like broken mannequin. Hear other pedestrians gasping and screaming all around him.

He and Clint weren’t on a mission. They were going to have dinner in a steakhouse in Brooklyn _after_ another mission accomplished. A dinner. That’s it. And then some asshole had to drive too fast as he and Clint were walking across the street with the light and then Clint was yelling his name (“ _Coulson_!”) and then he was flying and tumbling across the street onto the sidewalk and when he wasn’t moving anymore, he lifted his dazed head and saw that Clint wasn’t moving anymore either.

He thought Clint was dead.

He believed that throughout the hasty journey from a Brooklyn street to the medical bay on board the Helicarrier, separated from Clint the whole time. He did, until Brisson emerged from the OT and said to him, “He’s going to be fine, Phil. He’s pretty banged up, but he’s a tough bastard. He’ll be back to his old self in no time. We got him on some good drugs so he won’t feel any pain, all right?”

All right. Clint’s going to be all right.

Due to Clint’s actions, he’s suffered nothing more than bruised knees and hip, than grazed hands and palms that now rest on the side of the bed above the blankets covering Clint. They were treated and bandaged in the ER while Clint was in surgery. He hadn’t felt any pain from them then. He still doesn’t. The pain he _is_ feeling is coming from an entirely different area of his body.

He thought Clint was dead. He thought he had lost the chance to ever tell Clint all the maudlin crap roiling around in the aching, left side of his chest for the last ten years. Crap like, _I think you’re the only thing that matters to me anymore_ or _you’re crazy like me and beautiful and unpredictable and please never be normal_ or, _when I’m with you, ‘lonely’ is a word that’s erased from my vocabulary and replaced with ‘complete’_.

Like he said, maudlin crap. The kind of crap that would have Clint laughing his head off at him. Or worse, have Clint looking at him with horror. Disgust. _Fear_. Something that ends with, _I want to be assigned to a different handler_ and _please don’t talk to me again_.

No. No. Anything but that.

Give him a taste. Just a taste will do, even for life, if he can never have the whole wild, unbelievable, arrogant, gorgeous, _perfect_ buffet that is Clint Francis Barton.

“Mmm _nuuhh_.”

Oh, Clint is waking up. (Clint is going to be all right.)

Coulson waits until Clint’s eyelids are flickering, until Clint’s large, wide-set eyes open to half-mast and alight upon his face before speaking.

“Hey,” he murmurs, letting his lips quirk up. (Don’t smile too big now, Coulson. You want to show him friendly reassurance, not _I’m so glad you’re okay, I thought I lost you but I didn’t and I’m so glad_.)

Clint stares at him for several, long seconds. Blinks like an owl. Stares at him for several more seconds. Then, slowly, like the first sunrise of spring, Clint’s lips curve up into a small and endearing smile. It’s the sweetest smile Coulson has ever seen on Clint’s face. (Or anyone else’s, really.) The sheer force of it hits Coulson like one of Clint’s explosive arrows. Or the Hulk smashing him into the ground with both feet. Or the Helicarrier crashing from the sky onto him. (Hey, it’s all about the _impact_ , not the grisliness.)

“Hi,” Clint rasps, low and gravelly.

Coulson thinks that Clint should register his voice as an official Weapon of Mass Seduction.

“How are you feeling?”

Clint blinks owlishly at him again. Clint is still smiling that sweet smile at him. (And it is doing very, _very_ strange things to his insides. He may end up buying a boxful of fluffy kittens to unload all over Clint at this rate.) He drags his chair nearer to the head of the bed so Clint doesn’t have to raise his voice to speak to him. (That is the _only_ reason, shut up.)

“Did ya get the chicken?”

It’s Coulson’s turn to blink. What? Chicken? What chicken? Was he supposed to get chicken for Clint? Does Clint think that they’re still on the way to dinner and that chicken is what Clint wants to eat?

“Clint. Do you remember what happened?”

Clint blinks owlishly at him once again. It’s adorable as hell, and he is _this_ close to actually telling Clint that. (No, no, _no_ , don’t be stupid, Coulson. Keep all that mushy crap to yourself if you want Clint to _stay_.)

“You’re okay,” Clint says, his voice stronger.

“I am.” Out of Clint’s sight, on his lap, Coulson curls in his fingers at the intense warmth in his chest. “Thanks to you.”

When Clint isn’t blinking, Clint is staring at him with an earnestness that would perturb anyone else. But then, Coulson isn’t anyone else. Coulson is Clint’s SHIELD handler. His friend. His … partner. (Just _work_ , Coulson. You’ve checked out the guy’s dating history and there are no men in it so don’t kid yourself here.)

“I like fried chicken,” Clint says, and now his smile has an impish twist to it too. Somehow, it’s still so sweet and _innocent_. “I like fried chicken very much.”

Coulson’s lips twitch for a second. Ah, of course Clint would be hungry now. Unlike him, who’s had some snacks since the accident (head-on collision/automobile tragedy/ _attempted murder of the love of his life_ is what it was), Clint hasn’t had anything to eat.

“Is that what you want to eat? We’ll have to ask the doctors if you can eat it, or if you have to wait until you’re better.”

From under the blankets, Clint’s right hand sneaks out into the open. It just so happens that Coulson lifts and rests his right forearm on the bed, that Clint’s hand can therefore touch it and linger on it. (It was a coincidence, _shut up_.)

“You are fried chicken.”

Coulson blinks. Frowns even as his lips quirk up a little more. _What_?

“Uhm -”

“Fried chicken is really delicious, Phil. When ya tear off the skin and ya pop it into your mouth, it goes _crunch, crunch, crunch_ and it’s like, ya know you’re eating an animal’s _skin_ but it’s _so yummy_. And then you want some more and you just can’t get enough of it and you hope you will always have fried chicken in your life.”

Coulson’s lips twitch again. Tremendously. So does something in the left side of his chest.

Oh. _Ooh_. Brisson certainly wasn’t kidding about putting Clint on the good drugs, was he?

Goodness.

 _Fried chicken_.

And Clint … called him _Phil_. For the first time _ever_.

“Hi, Phil. Hello.”

And oh, there Clint goes again, saying his name so fondly like that. Maybe he should alert Brisson for an emergency operation when his heart sputters and stops in his chest from all the goddamn _hope_ choking it.

“Hello,” he says back (and boy, does he sound like he just raked his voice over hot coals).

“Phil. I wanna taste your eyes.”

As far as high-on-good-drugs requests go, Coulson thinks that’s a rather tame one -

“I wanna taste your eyes and lick them with my tongue while they’re coated with caramel ‘cause I think blue and brown look very nice together.”

Okay, he’s taking that back.

“I bet your eyes taste like mint. Or the sea far, far, far out there where all the big-ass fish are and have never met a human before. Maybe there are mermaids out there. Do you think there are mermaids out there? Mermen?”

What the hell, he’ll play along. He has nothing better to do anyway. (Nothing else he’d rather do.)

“Who can say, Clint. Only one percent of the oceans of the world has been explored so far. For all we know, there are entire colonies of merfolk living underwater and far away from us human beings.”

“I think you’d be a hot merman.”

“Mermen don’t go bald.”

“How do you know that, Phil?” Clint gives his forearm a shake. “Is it because you’re a merman and you never told me?”

Coulson sucks in his lower lip before some ridiculous, embarrassing noise flees from his mouth.

“No, Clint. I am not a merman. I’m _pretty_ sure I would know if I was one.”

Oh, Clint is staring at him with those soft, crinkled, half-mast eyes again. (If only it isn’t because of the drugs. If only.)

“Phil. Phil,” Clint murmurs. “You have a very nice ass.”

Coulson has no idea how Clint’s jumped from merfolk to his ass, but at least he’s familiar with his own ass, seeing as it’s been attached to his person for his whole existence. As far as he knows.

“Well, uhm. Thank you.”

He’s pretty sure his face is an interesting shade of beetroot right now. He is also _dying_ to take out his comm pad to record anything else Clint is going to say.

 _Clint thinks he has a nice ass_!

“I like it best when you’re not wearing a jacket, although I really, really like it when you wear a jacket ‘cause that means you’re wearing a suit and you look really handsome in them. When you’re not wearing a jacket I can see your ass in those tailored pants. Especially when you bend over to get something. It’s like …” Clint’s brow creases for a few moments. “Like _dinner rolls_. Yeah, like yummy, puffy dinner rolls straight out of the oven and all _tan_ and _round_. Do you go to the beach and suntan in the nude, Phil?”

Oh no, oh _hell_ no, he is not going to answer that question, not without imploding from the mortification, drugged Clint or not. (The answer is yes but that’s not the point and _he will not talk about it_.)

“Did you really compare my ass to _dinner rolls_?”

“Dinner rolls are delicious too, ya know. I know how to bake really nice ones.”

Coulson’s brain immediately jots that down under its List of Random Things About Clint Francis Barton to be Researched and Appropriately Categorized, which hangs next to the List of Things About Clint Francis Barton That Phillip J. Coulson Is Mad About. (The lists overlap rather often, sometimes with the List of Things About Clint Francis Barton That Phillip J. Coulson Is Angry About. Which isn’t the same as the second list. And surprisingly short, given how many complaints Clint’s previous handlers had about him. Then again, that’s why they’re _previous_ handlers, aren’t they?)

Oh. Clint is stroking his forearm. Thank god for the fact he’s wearing a blazer on top of his white t-shirt, or he would have _definitely_ imploded by now.

“Hi, Phil,” Clint rasps with that gravelly, low, sexy voice. “Hello, Phil.”

And that’s when Coulson’s brain says, _hasta la vista, baby_ and shuts down its Inhibition Center before going off on a holiday. (He can blame the shock from the accident/automobile tragedy/attempted murder on the love of his life for everything after this. Really.)

“Hello, sweetheart,” his traitorous mouth says.

Oh god, it’s unbelievable but Clint’s smile becomes even _more_ endearing. Like the spring sun thawing the winter ice and freeing all dormant life beneath it. Freeing something in his chest that he’s locked away for ten years straight. (Heh, _straight_.)

Clint wraps long, callused fingers around his forearm, as if to hold him in place. (As if Clint’s scared that he’s going to leave, that this is just a dream, but that’s probably just his _stupid_ heart hoping for too much. It’s just the _drugs_ , remember?) Clint doesn’t have to, though. He’s not going anywhere. He’s right here where he wants to be, at Clint’s side.

“Do you like the left side or the right side?”

Perhaps he’s been drugged by Brisson too and he just doesn’t realize it yet. He gets what Clint is asking without needing any explanation.

“The right side,” his traitorous, uncontrollable mouth says. “Because you’re left-handed.”

“That’s good. I like the left side. I can reach over with my dominant hand across the bed that way.”

“Yes. And I can reach over with _my_ dominant hand.”

Yep. Coulson’s brain has officially gone incognito and he doesn’t give a shit -

“Phil. Phil. People think I would be a bad father. They said that to me when I said I want a home and a partner and maybe a kid or two.”

It isn’t the abrupt change of topic that causes Coulson to blink this time. Wait, what? Clint’s thought about being a _father_? And people have said he would be a _bad_ one? Who are these assholes? Do they even _know_ Clint? About how loyal and brave and _good_ a man he is? And wait a minute, Clint … Clint said a partner, not a _wife_ -

“Maybe they’re right, Phil. I’m such a screwed up guy and I can’t even deal with myself most times but ya know what? I think _you’ll_ be an awesome dad. The best. Bestest. Bestest of bestest. Thinking about you with a fat, laughing baby that looks just like you is the bestest.”

Coulson blinks once more, hard. Clint’s thought about _him_ being a father? Hell, he’s never thought about it himself. He never had someone he wanted to share his future with, much less someone he wanted to have a _family_ with. A _partner_. Until … until now.

Does he?

Can he even trust anything Clint’s saying now? Or is it just the drugs talking? Will Clint even _remember_ any of this conversation tomorrow?

 _Jesus_.

What is he _doing_ here?

“I think you’ll be a _great_ father,” Coulson says firmly, his brain clearly on an extended vacation and not coming back online any time soon. “So what if your parents fucked up their job of bringing you up like good parents should? That doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to be a bad parent too. It means you _know_ what a child needs. That you know to give them what your parents didn’t give you.”

Now Clint is gaping at him, dry lips parted enough to reveal the edges of straight, white teeth, those blue eyes the roundest they’ve been since Clint woke up. Clint appears genuinely dumbfounded. As if Clint’s entire world has just spun off its axis. Coulson can relate to that rather well right now.

“You said fuck,” Clint stage whispers.

Coulson has to wrestle the muscles of his lower face into obedience. He isn’t sure if he’s actually succeeded.

“Yes, Clint. Believe it or not, I am capable of swearing. In at least fifteen different languages. And really, a _fat, laughing baby that looks just like me_?”

“Of course our baby would look just like you. You’re very handsome, ya know. Like, Hollywood movie star kinda handsome.”

Oh damn, _oh damn_ , there goes his heart, and he’s got one hand pressed to his chest but he can’t tell if his heart’s _stopped_ or not. His brain returns long enough to say, _nope, you heard that right, boy_ before going off again.

Clint said _our baby_.

 _Our_.

Clint’s … and _his_.

Which means … Clint’s thought about having a family … with _him_. Which is … just … Wow. Good lord. Holy shit. _Holy shit_. What is he going to do with devastating information like that when his brain’s gone offline and he can’t record and categorize it in his lists of everything about Clint Francis Barton and his whole world will _never be the same again_ -

“Phil. Phil. Phil? _Phil_?”

Clint is grasping his other hand now. Squeezing it. Jostling it. Clint looks utterly terrified.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” Coulson gasps, which _really_ doesn’t help the situation.

Clint grips his hand even harder and stares at him helplessly with humongous, glistening, puppy-like eyes.

“Are you dying? Please don’t die. I don’t want you to die, I want you around for a long, long, long time, Phil. Don’t die.”

Coulson is pretty certain at this point that even if he lives for a thousand years more, he will never tire of hearing Clint call him by his first name.

“I’m not dying. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I … I just had a _shock_ , that’s all.” He sucks in a deep breath and lowers his hand from his frantic (incredulous, _stubborn_ ) heart. “And _I_ was the one thinking all that just hours ago. You were _hit by a car_ , Clint, and you weren’t moving at all and you didn’t wake up when I held you and said your name.”

_And you’re drugged up to the gills. That’s the only reason you’re saying all these wonderful, heartbreaking things that I’ve yearned to hear from your lips for the last ten goddamn years._

_Is it contagious? It has to be, for me to be saying all these wonderful, heartbreaking things too_.

“I’m not dying. I’m not dead. I’m alive, see?”

Yes, Clint is alive. Alive and devilish and maddening and _sweet_ and _gorgeous_ and … everything Coulson has ever wanted in a partner for life. (Forever.)

“Yes, Clint, you’re alive. And I’m very glad about that.”

Oh, _oh_ , Clint is holding his hand. Tangling their fingers. Clint’s hand is very warm. Their fingers slot together just nice. (Maybe they really are made for each other.)

“Do you like me, Phil?”

“Yes. I like you,” Coulson’s mouth says, but perhaps it’s not as traitorous or uncontrollable as he accused it of being.

_I love you, Clint Francis Barton. More than anything else in this world._

“Oh. That’s good. I like you too. A lot. A lot like twenty blue whales in a fish tank. A million blue whales. Do you like blue whales too?”

Clint’s voice has gone even lower. Softer. Clint’s eyelids have also gone even lower. Clint’s starting to fall asleep.

“I think blue whales are majestic, lonesome creatures,” Coulson says. “Sometimes they do take my breath away.”

He doesn’t move his hand away from Clint’s.

“You are a blue whale,” Clint mumbles.

“I thought I was fried chicken.”

“Yes.” Clint’s eyelids flutter then rise to half-mast again. “I like fried chicken very much. Fried, fluffy chicken that go _crunch, crunch, crunch_ in your mouth and make you happy.” Clint lets out a mellifluous giggle. (A _giggle_! His brain had _better_ record that for all posterity, Coulson thinks.) “Fluff. It sounds so funny. Fluff, fluff, fluff, _fluff_.”

Coulson tightens his fingers around Clint’s. Just a little. (Just enough, for now.)

“Go to sleep, Clint,” Coulson murmurs, his own voice low and soft.

Clint is fighting to stay awake now. His eyelids flutter once more.

“Are you gonna stay?” Clint whispers, like a boy without a care in the universe.

“Yes, Clint.”

“Okay.”

Clint fights slumber for another minute more, struggling to keep those large, wide-set eyes open even to slits. Clint stares at Coulson the whole time. He likes being the focus of those eyes. He likes being the last thing that Clint sees before going to sleep. He likes being trusted so much that Clint will willingly sleep in his presence, even injured like he is.

“Go to sleep, Clint.”

“Good night, fried chicken,” Clint slurs.

Coulson doesn’t blink at all. He leaves his hand where it is, even as Clint’s fingers go lax around his.

“Good night, sweetheart,” Coulson whispers.

Clint’s eyes are shut. Clint’s face, contused as it is, is slack with a childlike serenity. Clint’s bandaged chest rises and falls steadily. Clint is alive. Safe. The love of his life.

Clint is Coulson’s fried chicken, too. But Coulson can never truly tell Clint that. Clint may never remember tonight’s surreal conversation. Or worse, Clint may remember it all without the influence of the drug and feel troubled. _Embarrassed_ about it. Awkward. Unable to look him in the eye or talk to him, _trust_ him like they always have of each other for all these years.

No, just. No. He won’t let that happen.

He can pretend the whole conversation never took place, if that’s what Clint wants. He can pretend that he was just having a bit of harmless fun with Clint. That nothing they said was serious. Just a joke. Just for laughs. Nothing more. (Although it’s everything to him. Everything.)

But until then, he’s fine where he is, sitting at Clint’s bedside with Clint’s fingers tangled with his. Listening to Clint’s soft, stable breaths, to Clint’s heartbeat as equally soft, stable beeps. Watching Clint’s eyes shift beneath those thin eyelids as Clint dreams of caramel, merfolk, dinner rolls, blue whales and fat, laughing babies (that look just like him, like _them_ ).

He’s fine.

 

<<< >>>

 

“Brisson. _Jacques_. You should have warned me that the painkillers you administered to Agent Barton could influence his mind and cause him to make false statements. Do you know how _dangerous_ it is?”

“What? Phil, I’m _very_ sure the drug given to him doesn’t do anything like that. We’ve had excellent results with other patients in reducing pain, and the most common side effect so far is euphoria. Mild confusion and lowered inhibition, a far second.”

“I … Really?”

“Yep. Believe me, if the drug had any adverse mind-altering qualities at all, we would never use it. Much less on our own agents.”

“You … Yes, of course. You’re right. My apologies, Jacques.”

“Hey, no problem. You were in … quite a shock last night when I saw you. You okay now?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m better. Thanks.”

“And, uh, anything happening with the guy who was driving the car?”

“Nick’s dealing with that. He’ll let me know later.”

“Okay. Good. Hey, Phil. Can I ask what it was that made you think the drug was influencing Agent Barton’s mind?”

“Ah, he was … he was just saying things that seemed … impossible to me. But I guess they … weren’t.”

“I see. Well, not to worry. He’s already been taken off the drug. He insisted he didn’t need it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Jacques. And sorry, again.”

“Seriously, it’s no problem. You and Barton are really tight. Heh, everyone on this flying piece of junk knows that.”

 

<<< >>>

 

Clint is wide awake when Coulson enters Clint’s medical bay room the afternoon after the accident (head-on collision/automobile tragedy/attempted murder of the love of his life is _still_ what it was). Clint is sitting propped up against a pile of pillows, blankets pushed down to the waist. Clint’s short, golden hair is a mess of flattened parts and spikes. Clint’s bruises are a lurid purple now as red blood cells break down in the affected areas.

Clint still looks utterly gorgeous and perfect to Coulson’s eyes.

Coulson keeps his eyes honed in on one of the bruises on Clint’s neck as he approaches the bed with a large and sealed cardboard bucket in his hands. He’s turned the printed logo on the bucket towards himself so Clint won’t guess yet what’s inside it. (But Clint is a smart man. Surely Clint will guess in the next few seconds even with the plastic cover sealing the delectable aroma of the bucket’s contents.)

He places the bucket on the brown overbed table at the foot of the bed. He clears his throat.

 _Come on, Coulson. Man up and look him in the eye already_.

Coulson does so, his face placid and inscrutable. He’d expected Clint’s face to be the same but no, it’s … nothing like that at all. Clint’s face is as guileless, as _vulnerable_ as Coulson has ever seen it. Clint gazes at him with wide, imploring eyes that seem to say, _I remember everything I said last night and I went too far, didn’t I_ and _you were just playing along with an idiot who was high, weren’t you, sir_ and _please tell me we’re still okay and that you’ll stay_.

And just like that, the Gordian knot of anxiety and despondence in Coulson’s chest disappears, never to return.

Coulson gazes back at Clint, his face as placid and inscrutable as ever. He pulls away the plastic lid of the bucket.

“Clint. I got the chicken.”

Coulson feels _victorious_ as the panic and dejection in Clint’s eyes wither away in the radiance of Clint’s entire face lifting and crinkling in that small, endearing smile. (And there are no drugs in Clint’s veins this time, this is Clint, _this is all Clint_.) He walks around the foot of the bed to Clint’s side. Clint doesn’t look at the opened bucket of fried chicken. Clint is looking at him, still bestowing that smile upon him.

“Hi, Phil,” Clint says, his hands at his sides above the blankets.

Coulson slides his right hand across those blankets until his fingertips touch Clint’s.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he replies, as their fingers slot together just nice, like they really are made for each other. He sits on the side of the bed next to Clint’s thigh.

“Hi, fried chicken.” Clint’s lips tremor hard, as if Clint is trying not to break into a grin. “Fried chicken is really delicious. I like fried chicken. I like fried chicken very much.”

Coulson has no such problem. He is the Master of the Deadpan Face. (In fact, Clint’s the one who told him so.)

“Coincidentally, I like fried chicken very much too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Clint?”

“Yeah, Phil?”

“Do you know you are fried chicken too?”

Clint finally loses the battle against the muscles of his face and grins as widely as his bruises will allow.

“I do, now.”

Their fingers tighten around each other as Coulson shifts nearer to Clint, their eyes still on each other.

“I like fried chicken very, very much, Clint. And now that I’ve had a taste of it, I want some more. I just can’t get enough of it. I hope I will always have fried chicken in my life.”

And oh, _oh_ , there’s that giggle, that mellow, luscious giggle that nobody will believe can ever flow from Clint Francis Barton’s AKA Hawkeye’s mouth. (Okay, brain, new list: The List of Clint Francis Barton’s Various Laughs and Giggles. It’s going to be a long one if he has any say about it.)

“C’mere,” Clint rasps, tugging on his hand.

Clint’s eyes have become heavy-lidded and sultry. Clint’s lips are curved up in a suave smile now, beckoning him like a sexy merman’s call. (Hey, it’s the _thought_ that counts, all right, and he thinks Clint would be an extremely hot merman unlike him.) It is a very, _very_ appealing look on Clint.

Coulson’s had this idea for the last ten years that when he finally kisses Clint, the whole fucking universe will just go _boom_ from the _ferocity_ of their lips clashing and grappling and locking together until they both can’t breathe and they’re seeing supernovas ignite behind their eyelids. This patient, delicate, _tender_ press of their lips, though?

Yeah, it’s better than any kiss in his mental repertoire of fantasy Clint kisses. It’s resplendent. It’s _real_.

“Do you think I would jump in front of a speeding car for _anyone_ , Phil?”

Coulson gazes at Clint. At the love of his life. The man he will soon marry, who will become his husband. The man who will be the other father of their child (or children, who can say at this point in time).

 _No, I didn’t think that, but then again I was an idiot who didn’t see all the signs that told the world how much you love me. I would gladly let you lick caramel off my eyes if seeing brown on blue makes you happy. I would dive to the bottom of the deepest trenches of the oceans to seek merfolk if it makes you laugh in a million different ways. I would give you fat, laughing babies that look just like me, like us, if that is what you ask of me_.

But what he says, with his legendary deadpan expression, is, “I didn’t know fried chicken could jump.”

And Clint, cackling his (ample, sumptuous) ass off while hugging him tightly with both arms and kissing his face, probably heard all that anyway.

 

<<< >>>

 

“Heh, only an _idea_? Phil, our genetic and stem cell research departments have been working on this for the last decade. We’ve made advancements at least _twenty years_ ahead of any other research facility in the _world_. We already created a zygote from the cells of two women, just a few months ago. Didn’t implant it though. A baby from the cells of two men? _Psh_ , we can do that. So, you and Clint. Want to make history?”

 

<<< >>>

 

Coulson and Clint do indeed make history by becoming the world’s first gay couple to have a child who’s a combination of them and no one else. They still required the aid of a surrogate, but as a fellow agent of SHIELD and a member of the research team, she’d volunteered with explicit knowledge of the situation and precisely whose baby she would be carrying to term.

The baby really does turn out to be a fat, happy, laughing one. A boy whose hair has the dark brown of Coulson’s but the lushness of Clint’s, who has their blue eyes and Coulson’s nose and a combination of their lips and Clint’s ears. The baby boy lives and grows up in an apartment in Brooklyn and not on board the Helicarrier because his fathers want him to lead as regular a life as possible in a regular home. The baby becomes a boy who becomes a teenager who follows his dads’ footsteps, joining SHIELD at the age of eighteen to begin training as the next Hawkeye.

(Clint likes to deny that he shed even a single tear at the SHIELD graduation ceremony, but Coulson knows his husband better than anyone else in this world. Clint hardly ever wears those purple sunglasses unless he doesn’t want anyone to see his eyes. All it took for Clint to lose it anyway was for their son to smile at them and wield his new bow and quiver of arrows.)

Then their son found love in SHIELD, too, and got married.

And here they are, so many, many years since that fateful accident on a Brooklyn street, with their six-year-old granddaughter who sagely says, “Fried chicken really _is_ yummy.”

Clint, his still luxuriant hair all white and just as sagely, nods and says, “Yes, it is, honey. Just like blue whale.”

Which is when their granddaughter glances in utter bafflement at _him_ for an explanation while he tries hard to hang onto his deadpan face. (He is still the Master, damnit.)

Which is also the moment a video call comes in from the Helicarrier that Clint opens up on a transparent projected screen in front of the couch.

“Hey, Dad, Pop. Hey, sweetums! Having a good time with your granddads?”

Coulson still feels a pang sometimes when he sees his son in a Hawkeye outfit. It’s noticeably different from Clint’s during Clint’s active years but SHIELD has kept the black-and-purple color scheme for every Hawkeye outfit since. In his heart (and there it will stay), the Hawkeye mantle will always belong to Clint first.

Their granddaughter rushes up to the transparent projected screen with joy evident on her round, rosy face.

“Grandpapa and Grandpop are _fried chicken_!” she shrieks at her dad.

Unsurprisingly, their son blinks hard (just like Coulson does).

“Your … grandpas are … fried chicken. _Ooookay_ then.”

Coulson glances at Clint and sees that his husband is clearly trying very hard not to crack up. He can relate rather well to that right now.

“Mission go all right?” Clint asks as he rubs beeswax onto his bow.

“Yeah. Easy peasy. They never saw me coming. Zero casualties and injuries.”

“Good,” Clint says and Coulson says, “Well done,” pride apparent in their voices.

Their son definitely has Clint’s smile.

After their son informs them that he’ll be over in half an hour to pick his daughter up, said daughter squeals and rushes to her room in the apartment to pack her things up. She does enjoy spending time with them, she really does, and they love her to bits but there’s only so much a young, energetic child can do with two old geezers babysitting her for the weekend. (She can go back and terrorize her parents now.)

When the transparent projected screen flickers and vanishes, Clint nonchalantly says, “You are still fried chicken, ya know.”

“So are you,” Coulson says, picking up his ultra-thin, SHIELD-issued comm pad again to resume reading that bookmarked article on colliding black holes (not to be confused with Clint’s stomach and their son’s during Christmas dinner).

“I still like fried chicken. Very, very much.”

“Coincidentally, I still like fried chicken very, very much too.” Coulson gazes down at his comm pad and doesn’t read a word on it. “Thirty years of fried chicken is quite a record, don’t you think?”

“Nah. Think we can do better.”

Clint’s voice has gone down to that low, heavy register that he delights in, that hums of decades of abiding affection and loyalty and love.

“Do you?” he asks past a sudden bump in his throat.

“Yeah. Go for fifty.”

“Sixty.”

Nope, he is not reading a single word of this article at all, and he doesn’t care.

“Let’s just round it up to a hundred,” Clint says, and Coulson quirks his lips up.

“Might as well go with forever.”

“Nah.”

Coulson finally glances up from his comm pad at Clint. Clint has set aside his bow and is gingerly rising from the armchair with both hands on its armrests. Clint’s hip (that was fractured fourteen years ago during that nasty mission in Benghazi) is probably acting up again. He’ll give Clint a deep tissue massage later.

“No?”

“Nope.”

Coulson tilts his head back and shuts his eyes as he feels his husband’s lips plant a noisy kiss upon his forehead.

“Too short,” Clint rasps into his pale, creased skin, “for the time I wanna spend with you.”

Coulson is still smiling to himself as Clint ambles away from the living room to check on their granddaughter. Sure, Clint’s won this round, but that’s okay. He’s gracious enough to concede the last word to Clint. This time. He’s a patient man, after all. He has the next sixty years to claim many more victories, give or take forever.

 

 

 

 

**Fin.**


End file.
